


Ouroboros

by evrybodysdarlin



Series: "The Way You Call Me Baby" series [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Anxiety, Barebacking, Comedy, Comfort Sex, Established Relationship, Fluff, Insomnia, M/M, Mommy Issues, Rings, commitment issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 15:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evrybodysdarlin/pseuds/evrybodysdarlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal can't escape his mama. Newt asks for a dragon vibrator. Sleepy sex is had. And how did rings and actual relationship discussion get involved in all of this? Sequel to "The Way You Call Me Baby."</p><p> </p><p>For the following prompt by laidbacktionist on pacificrimkink--"Newt is not the marrying type. Hannibal is not the marrying type. They both know that their partners are not the marrying type. Their relationship works anyway.</p><p>But one day Hannibal was picking up a payment/tribute/security money in gold when he spot a pair of wedding bands and all he could think of is how much it would suit Newt."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings--A consensual and caring, but semi-angsty and explicit sex scene. A few instances of people calling their romantic partner mean names (because that's what these two do). One instance of a minor OFC shaming a stripper character. (This story is really random, isn't it?)
> 
> Also, an accidental strange dose of Jewish Mother stereotype in my OFC. I'm obsessed with the comedic potential of Hannibal starting out as a nice NYC Jewish boy, since that's what Ron Perlman is IRL. It was actually hard for me to write the mom's dialogue in a non-Southern-sounding way, since my own guilt-tripping, part-Jewish mama is Southern.

Hannibal hadn't managed to pass this week's call off to Newt. He'd been stuck on the phone with his ma for almost half an hour now. He was able to run a multinational conglomerate, but he'd never been able to say no to his mama.

"So how's Newton doing? I've gotten used to talking to him most of the time when I call. I know you're so busy..." Ma let her voice deliberately trail off, and Hannibal literally bit his tongue to keep himself from voicing the apology that he knew she was waiting for.

"Newt's doing great. He's in his lab right now."

"On a Sunday? Doesn't he ever relax?"

"He loves his work, Ma."

"A scientist...that's a pretty good job for a man. Smart. He'll never be rich, but I guess you've got enough for both of you, ha!" 

Hannibal rolled his eyes. He was glad that his mother liked Newton, but he was getting a little sick of her raving about him. Not to mention, he was pretty sure that Newt was feeding her gossip behind his back whenever they talked on the phone without him there. 

"You know, darling, Hong Kong has gay marriage now..." There went another sneaky verbal dot-dot-dot.

"Yes, Hong Kong is very socially progressive. Great place to live."

Ma huffed at his reply. "I know that you don't care about getting married, big lifelong bachelor and all, but have you ever thought that maybe Newton would like you to offer him some kind of commitment sometime?"

Hannibal was about to blurt out that he was certainly committed to Newt, since he'd gotten a tattoo for him and all, but then he remembered that his ma didn't know that he had any tattoos in the first place. He covered up his ink whenever he saw her in person. She didn't approve.

"Ma, he knows that I'm committed. We live together, don't we?"

"So does everybody nowadays. That doesn't mean anything."

"It means something. I wish you'd just drop it."

"'Drop it!' Disrespectful! You talk to me like that and next time I won't bother calling at all!"

There he went with the tongue biting again.

"I just don't want you to lose Newton because he thinks that you're not taking this serious. He's a lot younger than you are. He may end up feeling like something's missing from his life..."

"I'll take it under consideration, Ma. I've gotta go." Hannibal was too annoyed to even make up a good excuse.

"OK, so busy, big man. I love you." Hannibal winced as his ma made kissing noises into the phone.

"Love you, too, Ma. Bye."

Hannibal went over and poured himself a small glass of whiskey. He deserved it after that conversation.

What the hell? He and Newt had never even had any kind of marriage conversation. He was pretty sure that both of them knew that neither the "black market overlord," nor "rogue rock star xenobiologist" job descriptions lent themselves to stable, tie-the-knot kind of lives. Not to mention, theirs was hardly a conventional relationship. The tattoo that was on his arm and the fact that he still hadn't gotten tired of waking up next to Newt in his bed each morning were both more evidence of "commitment" than he had _ever_ expected to see in his own personal life.

As he drained his glass of whiskey, though, he couldn't quite ignore a little itch of worry in the back of his mind. Was there any way that his Ma was right and Newt was secretly unhappy with his life?

Hannibal kept himself busy with bone powder export agreements for the rest of the day. When he finally got tired and headed back to his onsite apartment for dinner and bed, he found Newt already there and already dishing out takeout onto plates.

"Hi, sugarplum. Did you talk to Ethel today?"

Hannibal huffed, annoyed by both the nickname and the question. "Yes, I did. She talked my ear off."

"Did she tell you if her friend Barb ever admitted that her oldest daughter is a stripper and not really a trained ballet dancer?"

"What? No, 'Barb' never came up."

"Aw, damn! I've really been wanting to find out about that. Maybe I'll text her."

Hannibal grabbed his plate without comment. They really were conspiring against him.

As he and Newt ate their food, that annoying little tickle of anxiety came back, welling up inside his mind like some kind of mental gag reflex.

"Hey, kid?" he finally spoke.

"Yeah?" Newt stopped mid-bite, noodles hanging out of his mouth.

"Do you feel like there's something...missing in your life?"

"Actually, _yes_ ," Newt said firmly.

"Really? What?" Hannibal felt his eyebrows approaching his hairline. He could feel more wrinkles forming.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about this. Baby..." Newt reached out and grabbed Hannibal's wrist. "I want a coffee maker in our room."

"What?"

"Having to walk to the kitchen for coffee in the morning is just not OK. I want one of those really good instant coffee makers, right in our room, preferably right by the bed, just staring me in the face. Like 'BOOM, here's your coffee.' I'd really like one with a timer, so I could set it to be ready when I get up?" Newt was gesturing with his hands, frantic and enthused.

"I'm pretty sure I could do that," Hannibal answered cautiously. "Anything else you've been wanting?"

"Yeah! When I couldn't sleep last night, I came out here and started watching Hong Kong infomercials--"

"Newt, I told you, you can wake me up if you can't sleep, you don't have to go watch junk TV."

"I'm fine, sweetie, I love junk TV. Anyway, I started watching infomercials and it was so late at night that this really _dirty_ infomerical came on. It had sex toys. There was this vibrator." Newt paused. "It had five speeds. It was shaped like a dragon." He paused again, for effect. "It was _big_."

Hannibal laughed cautiously. "So you want a coffee maker in the bedroom... and a dragon vibrator?"

"Yes. I tried to write down the number, but it was in Chinese. I think I saved the scrap of paper. I got really tired and fell asleep right after that."

"OK, got it. So...nothing else that's been bothering you? Nothing with our...relationship?"

Newt laughed out loud. "I'm pretty sure that was the first time I've ever heard you say the word 'relationship,' dude. What the hell? There is something I've been meaning to ask you, though."

Hannibal braced himself. 

"Can I tie you up sometime in bed? Get some fuzzy handcuffs or something? I had this dream like that one time."

Hannibal snorted. "I suppose I'd be open to that."

"Also, I want you to stop taking over my half of the closet. You have way too many clothes."

"You aren't even _using_ your half. I only put a few shirts on your side."

"A few shirts and all your shoes and cuff links..."

"Get over it." Hannibal felt their usual easy banter coming back, the easy flow that made their life together perfect, and he smiled in relief.

"I love when you smile at me with all your teeth, baby. Makes me feel like I need to wear sunglasses."

Hannibal ruffled Newt's hair. "Shut up, runt."

"Listen," Newt said, dodging out from under his hand. "Is there anything that you've been wanting to change in our big official 'relationship'?" Hannibal knew that there were quotes around "relationship," because Newt helpfully demonstrated them with his fingers.

"Nope." Hannibal stuffed another bite of food into his mouth. "I'm good."

*****

Newt took him for his word and woke him up that night. Hannibal grumbled at first as he was shaken awake by Newt's grip on his shoulder, but his complaint turned into a pleased growl as he realized that Newt was naked, hard, and pressed up against him.

"I can't sleep," Newt whispered, stealing sloppy kisses in between the words. "I've been up for hours. Wear me out a little?"

"Oh, I'll fucking wear you out." He hitched Newt's leg up over his hip and rutted against him, and Newt moaned happily. When his hand slipped down to Newt's ass, pressing at his hole, Newt writhed all over.

"I didn't wanna take the pills tonight," Newt gasped. "They make me feel bad. But it's like my mind was racing..."

"No pills." Hannibal was searching for the bottle of lube he knew he had left somewhere under his pillow. "I'm here, baby."

Newt sighed and seemed to relax even as he kept up his grinding. Hannibal finally found the damn bottle and slicked his fingers, sliding two in at once. Newt liked going fast when he got like this, getting overwhelmed, and Hannibal knew just how to provide that.

"Oh, yes." Newt's head fell back, eyes slipping closed, mouth gaping. "That's it."

"Fuckin' right, that's it." Hannibal plunged his fingers deep, stroking at the most sensitive spot over and over.

"Need you." Newt was getting frantic again, so Hannibal removed his fingers and replaced them with his cock. Newt tensed up all over, and he waited for him to relax. He hadn't prepared him much.

"Don't stop, c'mon," Newt said, complaining, trying to pull him in closer. Hannibal sometimes feared that Newt would hurt himself when he got like this, but Newt was insistent, wrapping his leg around him, squirming on the sheets, so he obeyed.

They were lying on their sides, facing each other, tangled up together, and it was easy to fuck this way once he found the right angle. Hannibal could touch Newt's cock, his tattoos, his hard nipples and his tense face, and he did, his hips keeping up their rhythm as his hands wandered. Newt kept his arms wrapped around Hannibal's neck, clinging on too tight, nails scratching his shoulders. 

Sometimes talking helped him let go. "You gonna come for me, boy?" Hannibal whispered as he quickened his thrusts. "You been waiting for my cock?"

"Yes." Newt's eyes fell closed again. "Waiting all night."

"You got me now." Hannibal reached down to grasp Newt's erection, stroking it gently, slicking his hand with the precome that had already gathered at the head. "You got me."

"Yeah." He wasn't sure if Newt was answering him or had moved on to orgasm babble. "Yeah, yes." He felt Newt's cock jerk in his hand, and he thrust into him even deeper, bruisingly hard, until Newt shouted and came, twitching and tensing up all over until he finally, finally relaxed, all the tension fucked out of him.

"Good boy." Hannibal's own cock was still hard, but he knew that Newt was probably sore by this point, so he slipped out and jerked himself off. He finished in less than a minute, letting his come spurt onto Newt's naked chest, marking his tattoos. He always liked that view.

Newt, drowsy-eyed now, reached up and rubbed the come into his own skin, deliberate, looking up from under his eyelids. "Thank you," he whispered.

"Just doing my job." Hannibal turned Newt's limp body, pressing up against his back, tucking him close securely as he reached up with his own hand to the spot where he'd marked Newt, feeling the slippery heat still there. "Sleep, baby."

"'Kay..."

Newt slept for six hours straight after that.

*****

The next day, Hannibal had to deal with one of the most annoying parts of his job--collecting money he was owed from people who were flaking out.

A local businessman had bought a Kaiju-skin sofa for his mansion, but had turned out to be a little bit short on dough once it was time to pay. As a result, he had showed up at Hannibal's headquarters with a bunch of crap that he was hoping would equal the money he didn't have.

Hannibal snorted as he looked at the assortment of jewelry, weapons, and other random rich guy shit that was spread out before him. "This isn't the fucking barter system," Hannibal said. "We're not trading chickens for goats here. This is a legitimate business."

"I know, sir," the businessman stuttered. He was an American ex-pat, and he clearly hadn't known what he was getting into when he agreed to buy from Hannibal Chau.

"Do you think my guys have time to pawn and fence all this shit?" Hannibal continued. He paused as he noticed one of the open jewelry boxes laid out on the table. 

It held two rings, mirror images of each other. Each was a wide band, one of platinum and the other gold, and each had a patterned circle running around the middle of the ring in the contrasting metal. The pattern looked like a thin band of snake scales. Or Kaiju skin. 

Hannibal reached down and ran his finger over the platinum band marked with the golden scales. He thought about the way his gold-ringed hand looked when it wrapped around Newt's skinny wrist. 

"You can take all of this shit home and figure out how to turn it into liquid assets yourself," Hannibal told the man, shoving the pile of objects toward him. "I expect the full payment in two days. And by expect, I mean demand." On impulse, he grabbed the box holding the two rings. "And I'll keep these for myself. Pleasure doing business with you." 

He gestured to his men, and they hauled the groveling businessman and his goods out with just a little bit of unnecessary roughness. Hannibal studied the rings in his hands. What the hell had he been thinking?

*****

Hannibal shoved the rings into his bedside drawer and managed to almost forget about them for the next week. When they did cross his mind, he told himself that he had just gotten them because they were good-looking jewelry, maybe something valuable. They had nothing to do with Ma's nutso marriage ideas.

The following Sunday, he failed to escape Ma's call _again_. This time, Newt openly sold him out, by answering his cell phone (which he had told him not to do) and then telling Ma that yes, her son was standing right there, totally unoccupied. Damn traitor.

At least Ma didn't bring up any weighty personal issues this time. She just talked, in fact, about her friend Barb and Barb's stripper daughter. It wasn't a bad topic, as far as Ma conversations go. She was in a good mood, because she loved any time when she could favorably compare her child to somebody else's. (At least, favorably compare him as far as Ma knew. Hannibal was aware that his own list of misdeeds was far worse than some girl taking her clothes off at the Boom Boom Room.)

Newt had vanished into the bedroom as the conversation went on. Hannibal felt a prickle of annoyance. The least Newt could do was suffer with him. Maybe offer to put the phone on speaker and help the conversation along or something.

When Ma finally got tired of talking and acceped his excuse to hang up, Hannibal went after Newt, preparing to guilt trip him for his abandonment. When he opened the bedroom door, however, he saw an unexpected sight.

Newt was sitting on the bed, holding a jewelry box, looking down at the matching rings.

Newt looked up as he came in. "Did Ethel put you up to this?"

"Wh--what?" That was not the opening line he'd been expecting.

"All this week, your ma has been talking to me about how she'd sure like to see you get married before she _dies_." Newt jumped off the bed, looking like he was entering his manic mode. "She even tried to bring _God_ into it. God! I didn't even know what to say! We both know that I'm an atheist and you're the worst Jew ever."

"Hey, I'm not the worst _ever_ ," Hannibal automatically answered.

"Yes, yes you are. You're kind of a bad person in general, plus, don't think that I don't know that you're not supposed to eat pork or have tattoos. I know about those rules. I know!"

"How did we get on this?" Hannibal sputtered. "Where did you find those?"

"I was looking for my dragon vibrator," Newt mumbled, looking a little less confident.

"You were going to play with your vibrator while I was stuck on the phone with Ma? You're an asshole." 

"Stop changing the subject. Did you buy these rings because your ma is trying to get you to marry me?"

"I didn't buy them, I kind of just...found them. And I don't know why I got them, OK? It was an impulse theft."

"I'm kind of freaking out here." Newt slammed the ring box shut. "I literally never even thought about getting married until your mom started all this."

"I never thought about it either. She's been saying the same shit to me. She said that you might be 'dissatisfied with your life' if I don't offer you 'commitment.'"

"What the fuck, man. How could I be dissatisfied? Our life is awesome."

Hannibal got a rush, kind of like he imagined a skydiver falling out of a plane would feel, as he heard the word "our." Fear and excitement at the same time. And a little bit of nausea. 

"Our life?" he repeated.

"Yeah, I mean...I thought we kinda had a life together. Without rings or actually saying 'I love you' more than once a decade or any of that shit. I never gave much thought to the future, but when I did, I kind of thought we'd just...get even richer together, travel the world and fuck in lots of exotic locations, and then retire in a big mansion until we both die. Or until scientific progress achieves immortality, in which case we would still stay together, but also become swingers and spice up our eternal sex life with hot threesomes."

Hannibal put his hand over his eyes and burst into laughter. It might have had a little edge of hysteria to it. "I guess that's about what I imagined, too, kid."

He hadn't ever imagined their future, but he found it impossible to envision being away from Newt, not for a week, not even for a night. Even without words and promises and intentions, he had never really been planning on going anywhere.

"But you got these rings," Newt said softly. He opened the box and looked at them again. "They're pretty badass." He slipped the platinum band out of the box and tried it on his right ring finger. It was so big that it slipped off. He started trying it on other fingers, until he settled it onto his left thumb, where it fit perfectly.

"I just decided, I'm keeping this," Newt said, nodding decisively. "You clearly got it for me. I'm fucking wearing it."

"Okay." Hannibal didn't really know what to say to that.

"You want to try yours on?" Newt raised his eyebrows as he held out the box, smiling a crooked smile. It wasn't a proposal, not even any kind of promise, but it still sounded a little significant.

Hannibal's hand reached out to accept the ring before he even knew he was doing it.

The gold ring was the same size as Newt's, so it was too small to fit any finger except his pinky. He settled it onto his left hand, and Newt laughed.

"Dude, you're wearing a gold pinky ring. I guess you really are a mobster.'" Newt slowly put his hand up next to Hannibal's. A big hand and a small one, opposite rings on opposite fingers. Distorted mirror images. But still the same.

"Looks good," Newt said. The smile hadn't left his face.

"You're right, kid. It does."


End file.
